Tashiro Motoyu

Tashiro Motoyu is a wild hot spring (noyu) on the floor of the Komagome River valley on the eastern flank of the Hakkoda Mountains, in Komagome, Aomori City, Aomori Prefecture. The date of discovery is unknown, but tradition holds that a hunter named Mosuke Ota found the gushing water while hunting, and it was long called Mosuke-yu. Washed away by a flood in 1791, it was later restored, and a bathhouse hut was built in the Meiji era. During the 1902 Hakkoda snow march disaster, two soldiers separated from the main column reached this hut and survived the depths of winter by drinking the spring water. The site prospered as a bathing retreat for mine workers until around 1963, with as many as six inns at its peak.

The water is recorded as a hydrogen sulfide Glauber's salt spring, alkaline in character, with a source temperature of 48C. Flow remains abundant three decades after the inn closed, and naturally emerging water pours directly into the riverside tubs with no recirculation whatsoever. The water is faintly cloudy with an ochre tint and carries the distinctive smell of hydrogen sulfide. Cleaning, however, is done irregularly by local volunteers, and within a week to ten days algae and sediment can render the tubs unfit for bathing, so a clean bath is never guaranteed.

Yamada-kan, the last inn standing, closed in 1995, and most of its buildings collapsed under heavy snow from 2003 onward. What reportedly remains today is a wooden open-air tub, a rock tub, and a single wooden structure with a partly ruined roof, though conditions change from year to year and should be checked before visiting. There is no operator, no fee, no changing room and no toilet: both the approach and the bathing are entirely at your own risk. The Komagome Dam now under construction, due for completion in 2031, has a planned maximum water level of 513 meters, and Tashiro Motoyu sits below that line and is expected to be submerged.